Online Music Websites

Your Holiday Digital Music DJ Guide

To save ourselves from listening to our mom's record collection on repeat during this weekend's family gathering, we're taking on DJ duties. Forget flipping discs on a boombox; hook some powerful speakers up to a laptop and sign into these online music services to keep the party moving with new and unexpected tunes.

Pandora — A classic, Pandora keeps us going through the work day with our curated stations. Due to copyright licensing, listening to songs by the same artist is limited, but the service does allow you to skip over song fails.

Turntable.fm — We're taken with discovering new music through this new online digital music service. Hop into a crowd-friendly room; the "I <3 the 80s" room is a good choice.

8tracks — Mixtapes make a comeback on 8tracks, which lets users listen to mixtapes created by the community. Listen to playlists based on artist or genre and follow users whose mixes you love.

Spotify — Check out what your friends are listening to and discover new tunes with this free music service. You can pay for upgraded and premium services to get wireless streaming on your iPhone too, which makes it easy to plug and play to whatever iPod dock your parents have lying around.

Click through for three more online music resources.

Grooveshark — Search the Grooveshark music collection for favorite tunes and create a rockin' holiday playlist. The radio function also recommends songs similar to those already in playlists.

Google Music — With similar features to iTunes, Google Music is poised to become your go-to music software. Any new music uploaded to a computer will automatically sync to the Google Music account. Hooray for the music cloud!

The Hype Machine — For music fans who want to stay on top of breaking artists and new releases, stream tracks from The Hype Machine. The site aggregates MP3s from music blogs directly on its homepage. A great resource to discover the coolest songs.